Originally Posted by
Cyio
I have said this before, but it stands repeating. The ULCC model seems to plateau as the number of planes/flights/personal increase, eventually becoming unsustainable without changing the structure. You just can't run an airline after a certain size on a shoestring budget with all third party vendors. The whole economy of scale things plays out here.
Obviously the only solution to this problem outside of being bought out is to invest more into your infrastructure, but that means raising prices, which means you are no longer nearly as competitive as SWA/AA/UA etc on those same routes, especially given the extra services and comfort your competitors offer, not to mention route structure and frequency. ULCC works great at smaller sizes and on certain routes, but once you start to compete against more traditional carriers and you grow to do so, things start to unravel. Just my opinion
This is exactly the problem Allegiant is facing now, and it looks like management is trying to figure out a way to shrink the company before it collapses in on itself.